


Reaching For The Sky Only To Surrender

by Clarice Chiara Sorcha (claricechiarasorcha)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Misery, Sex With Dubious Benefits, Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-19 04:13:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8189426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claricechiarasorcha/pseuds/Clarice%20Chiara%20Sorcha
Summary: Please understand, I never had a secret chart
    
    To get me to the heart of this or any other matter
    
    Well, he talks like this you don't know what he's after
    
    When he speaks like this you don't know what he's after
    
  
Hux was taught to mask his mind from Kylo Ren long before they ever met. After Starkiller, they understand why.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, I've found myself mired in a major depressive episode for literal _weeks_ , and part of that was being completely unable to write. I rather painstakingly forced this out over the last four or five days in the hope of tricking my brain into writing properly again, and...it's hardly my best work, so just a head's up. I'm not trying to do anything different or original, I just have a lot of troubled feelings these days about worth and abandonment and the collapse of life's most essential structures and -- I shoved them on Hux. Poor bastard. With that said, Ren's not in much better a place, but he's in active avoidance mode, so. Yeah. They're both doomed, I guess, but then that's never anything new...
> 
> The lyrics mentioned in the summary, at the start of the story, and indeed those that make up the title: all are from Leonard Cohen's [_The Stranger Song_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3HTvlDFbm4). Because listening to Leonard when you're miserable is an experience in and of itself. Dammit.

_You tell him to come in sit down_  
_But something makes you turn around_  
_The door is open you can't close your shelter_  
_You try the handle of the road, it opens, do not be afraid_  
_It's you my love, you who are the stranger_  
_It is you my love, you who are the stranger_

 

It was difficult to explain the concept to someone without inherent Force sensitivity, or so Snoke claimed. But he had amended the statement by saying it was not impossible. The general had a particularly neat and ordered mind. Apparently, the simplicity of that particular structure would make matters considerably easier.

Such words had left him with a mild sensation of having been somehow insulted, though he supposed that to be an artefact of his upbringing. Hux had always been an excellent student, even in those subjects that did not come naturally to him. Certainly, Snoke’s lessons had been curt, to the point, and in some ways set up for failure; in the way a blind man might never hope to see again, teaching a non-sensitive tricks of the Force seemed a doomed effort.

And yet – Hux had surprised him. Naturally there had been no outward signs of that from Snoke himself. But Hux recalled well the first time he had met Kylo Ren: the faceless creature’s mind moving out as an unseen and outstretched claw, almost tender along the lines of Hux’s own. And then, with scarce exertion, Hux had twisted his thoughts into their hardest and most rigid order. The mental recoil had been so violent that Ren had actually flinched on the physical plane, his great hulking body gone stiff and strange. Snoke never spoke of their lessons or their result again. But in that one encounter, Hux had proof enough of fought-for excellence.

And yet, the concept behind it had proven surprisingly simple. For a non-sensitive, Snoke had counselled, he would do well to make of his mind a maze. A labyrinthine construction, layers upon layers; with both distraction and deflection, he could be a master of misdirection. Hux, fluent in more than one language, also could use a kind of unique thought patois not easily accessible to any save himself, simply because no-one else might follow the logic in which he had learned this as a child. Once he knew the trick, it seemed almost peculiar that few other officers seemed capable of it.

But then, Hux had been singled out for such opportunity. And while Snoke had indicated such training would allow him to show resistance against any Force user he might encounter, he had specified that it would be particularly useful against those of…a _certain_ mindset. Hux could never actively engage in mental warfare of that degree. But a mind construed of chaotic thought, of unhinged emotion: it would find Hux’s mind pure anathema. And in that, it would be able to do nothing more than draw away.

But in these bleak days, Hux had scarce few moments to contemplate whether Snoke had perfected his methods upon other young officers, those ambitious and ruthless enough to be marked for high command. The Order had moved from its greatest victory to end but hours later in a perfect shambles, and his thoughts now ran riot, kept under control only through the rigors of endless work. The message, when it came, was unexpected – and yet it could be nothing but inevitable. Kylo Ren had recovered enough for transfer to Snoke. A shuttle would be prepared for him within the shift.

From what little Hux had gleaned of the other man’s situation, he could barely be back to consciousness. Only three full cycles had elapsed since the _Finalizer_ ’s hyperspace jump had left Starkiller to collapse in upon herself; it was barely enough time to have extracted the man from a bacta tank. In that alone in could not be a good time to go to him, but: there were always reports to be filed. Even were his rank not taken from him, Hux could conceivably spend the rest of his career mired in the bureaucratic fallout of Starkiller alone.

And with Ren himself an invalid, nothing about the situation could be considered straightforward. At his best he remained belligerent. Though he was no such thing now, Hux knew it wouldn’t do to underestimate him. But surely even such a creature could not be at full strength after the injuries he had taken.

While he had not seen him since, he had seen the worst of it. Under Snoke’s orders, Hux had been the one to find him then: on his back, in the snow. Dark eyes had lain open and wide, white flakes gathered in their corners, floating on the clouding sclera. Hux had thought him dead. The revelation took him as low blow to the solar plexus, driving and dirty, leaving him gasping on ash-choked air that burned even as he swallowed in deeper yet.

And then Ren’s head had turned, blinking away snow and soot with sudden understanding.

_Hux_.

Ren had not spoken it aloud. It came only to his mind, wondering and wandering both, biting so deep, drawing such blood, that Hux swayed nearly to his knees. And then: it had drifted away, muted by the swift mercy of unconsciousness. It did not matter whether Ren could, or even _would_ remember it: the sight of the stoic general, breaking apart as did the very ground beneath his booted feet.

Ren had never known, after all. How the first sight of his own face had been as much a shock to Hux as this glimpse he’d believed would be the last. _He’s iust a boy_ , Hux had thought – the first with astonishment, the second with sudden grief. And said thought had both times been marvelling rather than unkind. But even from the beginning he’d never been able to deny the sheer intrigue of it. Hux himself, a general at just past thirty, in the presence of Snoke’s apprentice: by appearance, a man younger than even himself. But he was no brute creature. Instead, he had been such a pretty thing, in his odd and awkward way.

In that moment Armitage Hux, raised to a life of dedication and purest ideological drive, had never wanted anything so much as he had Kylo Ren. And yet, Ren had stared right through the general as though he were but a pane of transparisteel. Careless of his plans, and reckless of his orders: Ren had seen Hux as nothing more than merely mortal, with no relevance to his peculiar world of mysticism and outright magic. Hux had clawed himself up from a bastard’s birth, perhaps, but he could never erase the fact he had been born without Kylo Ren’s gifts. That he scorned them even as he envied them. Hux had no use for Force sensitivity. But that did not mean he had no use for a Force sensitive.

More uses than just professional.

But Hux had been nothing but another uniformed soldier, to Kylo Ren. And now his step turned slower, less certain even as he stepped upon the threshold of his sickroom. He entered without preamble, without permission. And there, he stopped dead. Ren did not lie in the bed, slaved to the machines that would monitor his recovery, given non-droid personnel were less hardy when it came to his temper. Ren instead sat seated on its side, hunched forward, dressed in his dark robes.

And in the door, his grand entrance stalled, his tongue tied around a practised speech that would not come, all he could say was, “Ren?”

“General Hux.”

Ren had not raised his unmasked, uncowled head, though his voice remained flat and free of mockery or sarcasm. Not that Hux could take true offence: in the end, even he could not know for how much longer that title could remain his own.

He cleared his dry throat, breath rasping against tissues that, while healed, seemed unable to forget the searing heat of a planet’s collapse. “I had hoped to find you recovered enough to give a report before your departure,” he began, and the neatly-ordered consonants tripped over too-long vowels, his speech a sudden jumble of sound. With a fierce swallow, hands tight in their gloves as he held them in precise parade rest, Hux pressed his lips together, and started again. “I am most interested in the destruction of the oscillator. We shall begin there.”

Ren turned, blinked – and the air tasted of sudden sharp ozone, bright and burning in the same way as his eyes. They now met his own with penetrating stare; as they narrowed, the air turned heavier still, and – it was too late. Ren had not attempted to divine Hux’s thoughts since the first disastrous attempt. But here, now, Hux had not expected Ren to be even conscious, let alone cognisant enough to be shielded against.

And now surprise flickered across his features, eyes widening, and Hux’s stomach lurched as if the artificial gravity generator had disintegrated beneath his feet.

“…you want to have sex with me.”

The words hung between them, as fresh and twitching as the body of an executed traitor. In the silence that followed, Hux could not even remember how to keep his thoughts to himself. But then, perhaps it did not matter, for his mind was now the white-out static of a type that had not overtaken him even in the crisis of Starkiller.

Ren cocked his head, long throat working even beneath the high collar of those ridiculous robes. “You _do_.” He said it with marvel, almost child-like in his discovery: disbelief on a careening downward spiral into outright desire. “I can _feel_ it.”

“That has nothing—”

“And you’ve wanted it for so _long_.” Rather than the terrible clawed rending of the interrogations Hux had witnessed, the touch of his mind now was almost gentle, nearly fragile. “I never…I never knew.” His mouth opened as if on a smile, found itself caught around his words. “I could never tell.”

With fingers tangled together in the small of his back, Hux stared ahead, saw nothing. “It’s irrelevant.”

“No. It’s not.” Wonder turned to sudden revulsion as he turned away, mouth twisted in sharp grimace that seemed to have little to do with the way one hand ghosted low over his abdomen. “Maybe this wouldn’t have happened,” he muttered, words as ragged and strained as his ruined robes. “If I’d _known_.”

“Known _what_?”

He’d made a terrible mistake in looking to Ren’s twisted features while the other man looked away. Their eyes met now, terrible unspoken cacophony of thought, and Hux’s chest tightened. The last battle had left his face scarred, but his odd beauty had only been heightened by it; no longer a boy, but a man who had seen war and death and yet still walked out the other side.

_Or at least, had been dragged out the other side. By you._

“I never realised that fucking you would have calmed you down.” Now Ren did smile, crooked and half-mad, but there the brightness of his eyes heralded something darker, something far more hurtful. And he stood, swayed about booted feet, and never once looked away. “Would it calm you down, now?” he said, as conversational as he might have been when requesting a shuttle for a mission. As if Kylo Ren ever requested such niceties of General Armitage Hux. And he took another step forward, one hand rising in odd slow arc. “When did you last sleep?”

Hux skittered back three steps before he caught himself, straightened his spine, held this uncertain new ground. “Have you gone mad?”

At the grating, gritted words, a strange frisson of emotion rippled over his features. They then stilled with unnatural suddenness, the accompanying reply oddly evasive. “I could not say,” he said, and his generous lips pursed, eyes flicking sideways, to the silent bank of unused medical equipment. “But it would be nice. Maybe.”

“To go mad?”

Ren blinked back up at him. “To fuck you.” And with the correction came a sudden unfurling: of energy, of emotion. The dark eyes had come alight, hungry for something more than mere flesh alone. This time when he stepped forward, Hux could not retreat.

“Let me fuck you.”

Any sensible person would have fled. The general held his ground, even as the word broke off in his throat, lodged there bleeding and bright. “ _Ren_.”

His sigh was a short thing, almost close to a giggle. “I wish I’d known.” But for all the humour of his words, his eyes were a black sinkhole, rich thick melancholy. “But you hid it so well,” he whispered, his breath ghosting over Hux’s cheek. “ _Too_ well.”

It was too late. It had been since the moment the oscillator had disintegrated beneath the petty machinations of but mere individuals, not even the army it might have been honourable to bow before. Still Hux fumbled for his datapad, drew the slim thing from one pocket as he thumbed the power on. “It doesn’t matter.”

“But it _does_.” Even as Hux refused to look up from the flickering screen, Ren crowded closer yet; his scent wavered between the rich musk of a warrior’s garb and the clinical cast of a medbay, seeped deep into skin and hair. “It’s why you were always so strange with me,” he added, and Hux chanced a glance upward. He regretted it with immediate effect; Ren’s lips were curved about silent laughter, eyes too dark and too wide. “I thought you _hated_ me.”

“I _do_ hate you.” His cheeks burned as if branded by his shame, lips tight as he cast blurred eyes down to the datapad. “And I don’t need your report. I already know Starkiller’s fall was because of you. I hope you’re proud of yourself.”

Even at the strangled sound Ren made then, Hux did not look back. With vision strange and blurred, he wouldn’t have seen a thing even if he had. Half-blind, he turned to go. A hand stopped him, low on one arm, almost encircling the wrist. It was made all the worse by the knowledge they shared – that Ren didn’t even have to stretch to that courtesy, if he so desired.

“Hux.”

His lips thinned, scarcely allowed the words their measured freedom. “Let go of me.”

The fingers tightened, loosened, and did not let go. “Do you want to do it here?” For a moment, he sounded almost uncertain. “Or would your rooms be better?”

“If you have nothing of value to add to my report,” Hux said, even as his forced glacial tone all but sublimated beneath the heat of his cheeks, “then I am leaving.”

“But why did you never say anything?” Then, in an answer almost half-hushed as his hand fell away, “You thought I wouldn’t care.”

“You _didn’t_ care.”

“I didn’t know.” His hands shifted again to fists, the sudden upspring of frustration hunching his too-wide shoulders forward, lips twisted. “I should have known. If I’d known…” When he looked up, his eyes were a blazing dark hole, having taken in so much light that it had left nothing but black in turn. “We can do it here.”

His injury had turned him to madness. Nothing else made sense. But even though Ren’s mind lay undone, open before him, its violent vibrancy felt to be something more than crass insanity. “Three cycles ago,” Hux began, very slow, parent speaking to slow child, “you were bleeding out from a major abdominal injury.”

Something close to a smile twitched his lip in devilish upturn, vanished so quick it left Hux to wonder if it had been but chance imagining. “It’s amazing what a little bacta and a lot of Force can do. It’s just a body, after all,” he said, instead, and then long blunt fingers closed about the hem of his robe. “Do you want to see?”

“ _Ren_.”

It barely twitched upward before Ren let it flutter away, though nothing in the gesture held the faintest hint of surrender. “There’s an office, through that door,” he said, one shoulder twitching in vague direction. “I’ll meet you there.”

The door slid open, then closed; Hux sagged on his feet, one trembling hand rising to push sharp at his aching temple. Weariness held him still, eyes fixed sightless upon the datapad. The whirl of information passed him by with hurricane force, no sense in any of it – and he stood at its eye, silent and untouched and yet doomed to the inevitable. Knowing that, perhaps, was the reason why he moved. The office held no viewports, no personality. Stocked with only the most generic of items, it reeked of being simple transient space, at the liberty of those who had use of it.

At the quiet movement of the door behind him, Hux turned from his contemplation of the only soft furnishing – a black couch, sharp utilitarian edges lined in leather – and found himself staring at Ren’s left hand.

“Where did you get that from?”

A glance upward earned him an almost pitying look. “Does it matter?”

In fact it did not – because Hux could clearly see the unbroken seal of the tube. Some part of him, traitorous and insatiable, carolled in glee at the implication; the more sensible part warned only of rack and ruin.

_And you should know the result of both of those, now_.

“I didn’t get any barriers,” Ren added, and one eyebrow arched along with a careless shoulder. “I figured if you’re that concerned about where I’ve been, you can always swallow your pride, go get your shots from medical afterwards.” The darkness that flickered over his expression then was as a veil, masking even his expressive eyes from mere contemplation. “Though the only place I’ve been lately is a bacta tank, so. You know.”

He swallowed hard. The only pride he had left was in that his voice trembled not a whit. “I don’t want this.”

Those dark eyes did not blink, did not once look away from Hux as Ren stripped himself almost bare. Clad now only in trousers, the lubricant back in his hand, Ren raised an eyebrow. Even the harsh pink scar tissue of the bowcaster wound could not halt the involuntary trace of tongue over his lower lip, eyes darting down to the generous bulge between his thighs. His nclad torso was a topographical treasure of scars and stories, and yet Hux couldn’t look away from the one thing still masked from him.

“Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”

“Like, fucking? No. I’ve never done this before.” With a neat toss of his arm the lubricant bounced once, twice on the couch before settling to a stop. “But I know what you want, General,” he said, almost gentle as the door’s lock beeped to lock mode, now stepping closer. “I know.”

The ache jaw of his jaw was familiar, hardly fleeting. “I’ll invite you not to go poking around in my head.”

“Well, if you want me to go poking other places, it’s probably a good idea to let me do it now, at least.”

Even with Ren’s eyes upon him, hands moving to unfasten the last trappings of his clothing, Hux could not believe he would allow this: an essential virgin, ploughing him to ruin and then well beyond. His hands moved quick over the seams and seals of his uniform, stripping it away with the same curt efficacy he used to dress himself before every shift. Hux did not stop until he was naked save for his rank tags, every article neatly folded and set aside.

Ren’s eyes moved over the little stack and its careful edges, gaze quick and curious, lips half-opened around some words never spoken. Only then did he carefully ease Hux down, seating him upon the wide arm of the couch. But his eyes did not meet Hux’s own – they followed instead the slow line of his own fingers, gentling the space just above his hair.

“It’s red,” Hux said, more confrontational than perhaps he had intended. “So what?”

And Ren sighed, against his lips. It was almost too easy to allow him to push back, to push down. But then, Hux had already fallen long ago. Laid upon his back on the low arm of the couch, eyes fixed upon the ceiling, he reminded himself that being a virgin, Ren could not last long. It would be over, soon enough. All of it would be over.

With trousers hung low around his thighs, Ren nudged closer; his cock, now revealed in all its monstrous size, proved half-hard already. The damp tip pressed to trembling lips, and Hux swallowed back a sigh as he opened his mouth to begin something that required no words.

But he did not expect the hand cradling his head, fingers sliding about the curve of his skull, gentle through gel-stiff hair. As Hux opened his mouth wider, teeth carefully guarded while Ren pushed forward, he felt a twist of surprise, low in his gut. Ren did not display the lack of finesse Hux would have expected from one so inexperienced. The hand on his head did not force, barely guided; Ren allowed Hux complete control, for all he lay naked on his back.

And despite himself, despite everything, Hux could take pleasure in this: heat pooling low in his groin, his own ignored cock hardening, coming to lie twitching against the sharp rise and fall of his abdomen. Hux had long ago found a certain fondness for sucking cock – and had it been as little as a week before now, he would have taken considerable pleasure in having Kylo Ren halfway down his throat. Instead he found it worked through with faint bitterness, the melancholy of dreams given over too late to matter; both underlay the salt-musk taste of him as Hux worked along the shaft, the great cock now laid across his lips.

Ren drew back without warning, leaning down, taking his mouth. The hand on his chest, for all it held him down, lay palm-open with something close to gentleness. And the thumb rubbed over one nipple, the nub too hard and too sensitive, though Hux’s moan was swallowed alive and whole. Ren kissed well, for a virgin.

But then Hux could feel him there, somewhere in his mind: picking at his knowledge, at his memories. It made his touch and his motions strangely knowing as he pushed forward, lifting up his legs. Heat suffused his face with such suddenness that Hux felt himself the virgin as the dark eyes widened, fixed upon one point between the open span of his thighs.

“I can do it.” His voice betrayed him, again; higher in pitch than he would have allowed, though thankfully it did not crack nor break. Hux swallowed hard, tried again. “If you give me the lubricant—”

Ren’s head moved back and forth but his eyes were riveted, his dark hair haloed about the pale cameo of his marred features. “I could do it for you.”

“It’ll be easier if I do it.”

And he glanced up, mouth twitching to half-smile. “You want me to use my mouth.”

“ _Ren_.”

The caress over his thoughts was gentle where it took its truth, and its instruction. “I could,” he murmured, eyes already flicked back down; his tongue, deeply pink, crept out of the corner of his half-opened lips. “Let’s just say it’s all part of the service.”

The tight band across his chest should have made it impossible to breathe, let alone speak. “No.”

One eyebrow arched. “No?”

“Just…” Struggling to sit up, Hux found himself pushed him down, that palm too warm over his chest, again. He had to wonder if Ren pulled away now, if its shape would remain: burned into his skin, etched and endless.

“I can do it, Hux.” And his fingertips moved briefly over the raised Aurebesh of Hux’s full name, upon the cool metal of his rank tags. He glanced up, lips quirked even as he traced over again those letters that spelled out the first name of the two. “It’s okay. I’m good with my hands.”

As the fingers of said hands began their work, slick and warm with the medical lubricant, Hux could not denounce it as a lie. Instead he stared at the ceiling, wondering when he had lost control over his life. Had it been before Starkiller? Was Starkiller mere aftereffect, rather than root cause?

And then he gasped, sharp and sudden, as Ren drew away only to move forward, hips nestling between his own, parting them just enough to ache at the angle. One hand pressed to the inside of one thigh, the heat of his cock following. A moment later and Ren had his hand about the root, working the head over the opened flutter of Hux’s hole, its slick slit catching the rim.

“Are you ready?”

Hux closed his eyes. He would never be ready. And yet Ren knew the answer, had the head half-hooded in the reddened stretch of his hole. With hands braced just below his knees, Ren pushed forward; the first glide stuttered over the fat head, Hux’s nails scraping over leather. And then he was in, holding his peace. Hux drew a stuttering breath, silent in a victory that felt closer to absolute failure. And Ren began to move, setting a strangely sedate pace. He should have complained. Should have said he liked it, _wanted_ it hard and fast.

But he didn’t, and Ren knew it. But as the slide became slicker, easier, Ren began to work faster. With knees together, he could lean closer, drive deeper. Hux’s hands closed over Ren’s wrists, and he cursed himself for the sentiment even as their fingers met, laced tight.

At the moment he stopped, Hux caught only the briefest flash of Ren’s strange grin before he pulled back. The grin only grew wider as Ren pushed his knees apart, bending forward. With hands braced behind his head, Ren again pressed lips over Hux’s own. With nowhere left to go, Hux cursed the tremble of his hands as they settled over the swell of Ren’s opened ribcage, their quicktime movement in counterpoint rhythm to his gasping breaths. The snap of hips, driving forward, mirrored the endless pull of an artificial gravity, that false attractor controlled by design more than true desire.

Kiss breaking, Ren leaned so that his back arched with chest pushed forward in convex curve, hips pressed tight against Hux’s pelvis. One hand moved forward, fingers light over his dick, working in a stutter-quick rhythm that had Hux gasping, furious begging epithet dragged from his lips against his will. But even when he fought himself to silence, Ren only grinned, leaned forward again.

“Look at me.”

Hux stared, eyes wet and hard. Ren gave a little huffing laugh, and then: his kiss came as demanding as his thrusts, the wet-slap sound of tongues and balls alike. Groaning, Hux reached between them, adjusting his abused cock. Ren obligingly moved just slightly back. The drag of his cock over that one place inside left Hux thoughtless, stupid. He closed both hands in light cradle over Ren’s head, initiating his own kiss as he drew him far more than too close.

Ren drew back not just for breath, but to voice a strange snarl that sparked down Hux’s spine as if it were a fired wick, blazing to full heat only low in his groin. And he found himself forced to hold tighter still as Ren picked him up, not a single warning in the motion. They kissed still as they moved, Ren fluid even without sight as he pushed Hux’s back up against the wall. With ankles locked, Hux gave up to superior strength, feeling the harsh working muscles of his ass. He knew he should stop. As fingernails dug into his back, he knew he would do no such thing.

A slap rang out next to his ear, Ren’s opened palm pressed hard to the chill of an alusteel wall; the other hand opened beneath his ass, cupping and grinding, forcing Hux to uneven bounce, rising and falling upon the upthrust spear of a massive cock.

But even such sensation could not draw him back from Ren’s mind. With his face pressed into the space between shoulder and throat, teeth grazing throbbing pulse, Hux could _feel_ it against his own. The edges were bleeding out, seeking and masterless. It was as it had been on Starkiller: when Hux had lowered his own shields. When Hux had gone to his knees, his head aching, his own self torn and shredded and subsumed.

But it was different, now; brighter. Burning. A conflagration of thought, and at the centre of it all: Kylo Ren, opened to him. Inviting him in, pulling him deeper. Hux groaned, clenched hard about his cock, and dug his nails in. It would be enough, this way. It had to be enough.

 And there, in his mind, one single thought, sudden and encompassing: a girl in profile, dark hair pulled away from her strong features even as strands fluttered loose in soft wave, eyes bright and burning, skin silvery and her silhouette limned in golden sunlight.

_Rey_.

Cold swallowed him first, then heat came to burn it all to ash and ember: so like Starkiller, all over again. And this time, again, at the centre of everything, the _girl_ : the one by whose hand it had fallen. And Hux could see her in Ren’s mind like some terrible blazing brilliance of light and power: her face, her voice, her, her, _her_. Ren drove deep into Hux, and his thoughts were consumed only by _Rey_.

He should get off his dick. Had it been anyone else, Hux never would have allowed such insolence. But he had lost Ren to imagined pleasures long ago. And it was so easy – almost too easy – to draw the ruins of his own mind back from even that great spilling supernova of power. The faint regret he could not help, nor the sense of loss: it was as it had been, before the final jump to hyperspace from Starkiller. As her commanding officer and chief engineer, Hux had only fired her once. Then, she had been lost to him. Kylo Ren had also been his for but a moment.

_He was never yours._

For all the agony of the lessons with Snoke, it felt too easy, indeed. Even as Ren continued to hold him close, sending shock after shock of pressure-heat- _pleasure_ through his traitorous body, Hux focused on his mind alone. Everything about it was familiar, based upon plans drawn up so long ago. Building it back, brick by brick – shoring up his mind against the unbridled ecstasy of another, too great even to see what he blinded. And now his own fingers dug deep, drawing blood: his own was bright upon his bitten ragged lip, its iron-tang bitter and bold.

Ren, even his unholy preternatural strength, could now not summon enough for anything but stuttering rhythm, never quite reaching the speed that he so desired against the relentless foe of basic gravity. With another low growl, resonating deep in the heaving barrel of his chest, Ren moved back to the cursed leather of the settee. This time Hux found himself upon the actual seat, the leather tight sharp drag against the sweat of his back as Kylo drew away, dick slipping free from the aching clench of his ass. The sudden cold bite of it went deep, even as he told himself with stern disgust that surely he had not expected better of Kylo Ren.

But one hand moved to shoulder, the other hip – and together they encouraged him over, leaving his arched body supported by the dubious strength of trembling arms and thighs. A scarce gasping breath later, and Ren thrust into him from behind, great handspan almost circling his waist like a belt. His eyes burned dry with the sting of saltwater, the taste bitter against the back of his throat. Ren moved faster, harder, deeper – all so much easier for him, now, with Hux on hands and knees before his might.

The warmth of him burned, a crucible pushing down from what felt all sides even when Kylo lay only above him, chest pressed hard to the tensed jagged line of his back as the entire great body seized and stuttered, his spill burning inside. Hux fixed a blurring gaze upon his fingers, now white-knuckled in black leather, and held his silence.

As long moments passed the weight of him only grew denser, now in languid drape over hip and shoulder. As Ren sighed, Hux shivered at the twitch of a half-hard dick still in his ass. Hair, damp with sweat, hung in stinging stringy lines across his forehead, the tips flickering at his eyes. Hux closed them, breathed through his nose. The ache of shoulders, arms, wrists, knees, thighs: all blurred together into one great throbbing agony, one that could not match the hollow of his heart. But still he kept his silence. He had learned that lesson long ago. He had not even needed to be told it twice.

Ren withdrew with a lack of grace that had Hux hissing, though his lips clamped down around the sound. Ren had heard it not at all, flopping down at his side in a riot of long lazy limbs. Hux moved far more carefully, wincing at the pressure upon his ass; in many ways, his habitual standing pose could but be a boon in the days to come.

Bur already Ren was rising, turning. His mind brushed against his, a flinch flickering over his features; how typical, that the only gift the girl had permitted the man had only made him all the more appealing. One hand reached for Hux’s hip even as his mind took an uncertain step backward from the rising barriers about Hux’s own. And as his fingertips ghosted soft against the hardness of Hux’s cock his expression morphed into deep frown, strange misshapen criss-cross with the fading scar of the scavenger girl’s last touch.

“You didn’t come.”

“It’s fine.” He raised one hand, batted his away. “I’ll do it.” As his fingers – half-numb from their earlier clenched hold – hooked about his cock, Hux jerked his head towards the door. “You can go, now.”

Ren went only to his knees before him. Wordless, both, Ren moved closer: mouth open, lips already dampened by slow pass of a thoughtful tongue. As he took the head Ren kept his eyes downward, lazy and hooded, even as he looked directly into the daze of Hux’s own. He surely could not be thinking of the scavenger now, not with a dick in his mouth. But Hux thought of her. And he had barely seen her, and certainly never in person. Just the hazy holo of a woman with blazing sword in hand, as he had himself hacked through hours of the autopsy of his whole life’s work. And yet she felt so clear to him, now, as Ren’s hands encouraged the shaft deeper into his opened mouth.

She was such a pretty little thing. Hux had never had much interest in women, but even he could see it. The pull of her would be irresistible to one such as Kylo Ren. Without training, without forethought, she had brought him low – and then, had left him there to remember it later.

And Ren would never forget. Even as he brought off a general of the First Order, he thought of her small gamin face and wondered what stars she might see tonight. And with his hands tangled in that dark hair, Hux pulled too hard, and knew it didn’t matter. Ren’s own fingertips dug deep, forging pinpoint bruises in his thighs, purple-black half-circles to be worn like manacles later, hidden beneath the stiff austerity of a uniform he might not even be permitted to keep for very much longer.

And now he drew him so deep that Hux’s cock all but vanished between those plush lips, held prisoner by the wet branding heat of mouth and throat. It should have been impossible, for one so inexperienced, so unknowing of the practicalities of such a thing. Certainly Hux had taken many a lesson before excelling in all such subjects.

But then, Kylo Ren was an impossible thing indeed. Hux curved forward, toes curling, every muscle locking to trembling spasm. Ren’s long throat, spilt-milk skin dotted with dark moles, worked through the spurting release, Hux’s mind the frantic fallout pitiful pleasurable misery. He had come so easy.

He’d never have thought it would be this hard.

But already Ren’s hands were rising, long blunt fingers closing over the claws of his own, loosening his grip. Drawing back, letting go: neither action made it any easier. In fact, seeing him this way – lips damp with spit and drool and the white streaks of come not swallowed, a pink tongue teasing over flushed lips – only made it worse. That, and those damned dark eyes.

Even as Hux said not a word, still and silent save for the screaming reality of his trembling body, Ren sat back on his heels. Between the bunched muscles of his thighs, the dark hair could not mask he had grown half-hard again. Yet he remained thus, thoughtful and silent, in a way he had never been before. Hux had never wanted so badly to hate the bastard.

“Well.” His tongue rasped over dry lips, but compared with the aching crush of lungs, it was but a mere scratch. “I…”

The sheer idiocy of speaking his gratitude had any further speech lodging in his throat. And Ren’s head tilted to one side, something dreadfully close to sadness on his peculiar features.

“Do you want to do this again?”

Hux only stared. Dropping his gaze would have made no difference. He had already lost this battle, long before it had even begun. And hope had not been made for people like them.

“Can’t you tell?” he asked, at last.

Ren’s pause lasted but a moment. “No.” He spoke very flat, even by the standards of his particularly odd voice. But then, there was no-one else in the galaxy quite like Kylo Ren. “No, I can’t. Not anymore.”

Hux closed his eyes. “Chances are, you’re never coming back to the _Finalizer_.”

“Is that what you want?”

_And I may not be here myself, besides_. Hux opened them, again, his weariness settled upon his chest like a gravestone. Not even the strongest of stims would keep him awake much longer, though he’d be downing another ill-advised dose before the hour was up.

“I don’t believe that what _I_ want is particularly relevant right now.”

Some part of him wished he’d never spoken the thought aloud. But there was no way to take it back – and the part of him that would have was a small, shrivelled thing, long since silenced. He stared only at his hands as Ren rose. And then: the rustle of clothing, the dragging eternity of what felt to be a thousand layers, wrapping around him again. Naked yet himself, he dhivered, but did not move.

“Hux.”

It would be a mistake, to look up. Hux supposed that once a person began to make them, they would become a habit hard to break. As his fingers twitched about a cigarra not even there, he sighed. “What is it, Ren?”

His lips had twisted, and now he truly did seem nothing more than a boy. “Master Snoke has not yet decided where I shall go.”

Hux closed his eyes. Behind them he found only the girl: her eyes hard and bright, features set, her light a bright and blinding thing even in the harsh overexposure of a desert plain.

“I don’t believe in fate,” Hux said, very quiet. “But then, I also don’t believe that it would require me to do so.” And he grimaced, hands fisted upon his knees. “Besides,” he whispered, “it’s not as if you belong here.”

The door whisked open, closed. Hux, left alone to his thoughts, rose so he might begin the slow process of redressing. Underwear socks, undershirt; and with them came the strategic rebuild of his thoughts, the structured layering of sense and logic and reason. It might be all he had left, now. But at least his thoughts could still be his alone.

And maybe if he kept telling himself so, he’d actually come to believe it, too.


End file.
